Classical music
Carl Schuricht
Carl Schuricht (1880-1967) ranks among the great conductors of the twentieth century. Born in Danzig into a family of organ builders, trained notably under Max Reger and Engelbert Humperdinck, he led the musical life of Wiesbaden for many years. Under Nazism, he defended his Jewish musicians and kept Mendelssohn and Hindemith on his programmes; threatened, he left Germany in 1944 to take refuge in Switzerland. He married Martha Banz, from Lucerne, and settled on the Riviera, at Corseaux above Vevey. A sought-after guest conductor, faithful to Beethoven and Bruckner, he performed across Europe into old age and died at Corseaux in 1967.
Carl Schuricht: sixty-one times at the head of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande
A conductor who did not feel the weight of the years
Over sixteen years, Carl Schuricht conducted the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande sixty-one times, never seeming to feel the weight of the years. The most striking memory remains the concert of 1 December 1954, at the Pavillon de Montreux, where he conducted Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with a hundred and twenty singers from Chailly and La Tour-de-Peilz, prepared by Robert Mermoud: his way of winning the complicity of musicians and choristers gave the “Ode to Joy” a brilliance no one forgot. In thanks, the singers presented him with a diploma expressing their gratitude.
He conducted his last concert in Paris in 1965: Carl Schuricht was then eighty-five, and the work was, once again, the Ninth.
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